The thing burst and his hands slammed shut on what was left.
He felt something moving in his two-handed fist. He opened his hands and saw what seemed to be a myriad of tiny, dark creatures running out onto his fingers and up his wrists. He held his hands up to his eyes. He was not sure if what he could see was a multitude of tiny entities moving together, as though with one mind, or a single creature made up of almost microscopic sections. Both his hands were covered, as though by thin gloves. He became aware of a slightly painful sensation in the affected areas, and brushed his hands together. After a few moments of vigorous washing motions the “gloves,” and the pain, began to subside. Whatever had come out of the egg turned to dust that blew away in the wind as it fell.
A mottled, bruiselike stain remained to mark where the contents of the object had spread. He tried rubbing his hands in the grass, but without effect. The stain seemed indelible.
His skin itched. His hands and wrists looked horrible, as though his skin was diseased. Rubbing them fretfully against each other, he peered up into the trees again.
He saw a branch sway down, as though something was walking along it.
He picked a large stone out of the mud and threw it at where he judged the source of the movement to be.
There was a commotion among the leaves, and the harsh, cackling sound recommenced with a vengeance. Nearby, all along the line of trees, other, presumably similar creatures, took up the call. Their combined din became a terrible cacophony. Large sections of all the trees began to heave agitatedly. In his almost-hysterical state of confusion Maurice thought he could see thin arms waving and gesticulating among the branches.
He turned and ran, but in the wrong direction, away from his car. He realized his mistake almost at once, but dared not stop.
Once, he glanced to the left. Behind the trees, in among the shrubs and bushes, spidery shapes seemed to be scuttling up out from between the roots buried there. He got the impression that they were moving along parallel to him. Their movements were slow, but so were his, hampered as he was by the deep tire tracks and the clinging mud.
He reached the porta-cabin. A shuttered window was open on the side. He ran to the far end, where he could see the edge of the lowest of a set of wooden steps protruding. The door above the steps was open, held back against the wind with a twist of wire. He collapsed on his knees on the steps and looked into the cabin. A young skinhead with a tattooed scalp, in overalls and a black donkey-jacket, sat at an improvised desk, stirring the contents of a mug with one hand and clutching a coverless paperback in the other. The young man regarded him inquisitively over the book, which he lowered a couple of inches.
Maurice got awkwardly up off the steps, turned, and looked back into the trees. He realized the scolding sounds had stopped. The trees swayed gently, normally, in the wind. As far as he could see, nothing moved among them that should not. The mud lane leading to the road was empty.
“What have you got?” a voice asked from inside the cabin. It was a tired, old man’s voice.
He turned and looked at the skinhead, who shrugged, and gestured back over his shoulder.
Half way into the cabin, on a pile of filthy mattresses, lay an elderly, whiskery man, also in overalls. He was on his side, with his head propped in his hand.
“Is it household? Garden? That sort of thing?” the old man demanded.
“I’m sorry ...?” said Maurice, uncomprehendingly.
“Yer rubbish,” said the young man irritably. “What is it?” He sneered at the muddy, frightened man in front of him, who could only press his hand against his brow and shake his head.
“Bloody Hell!” the skinhead said, “what we got here?” and held the tattered book up to his face in a contemptuous, dismissive gesture.
The old man turned and sat up. “You got any rubbish to deposit at this tip, or haven’t you?” he asked.
“Oh, I see what you mean! No, I haven’t.”
“Then why are you here? What can we do for you? This is Council land, you know. Private.”
“Well, to tell the truth, my car had a bump on the road back there. Nothing serious. I’m a bit shaken. Thought I’d get some fresh air to clear my head. Is that okay?”
“No harm in that,” the old man conceded. “As long as you don’t hang about. Trouble is, we get people in scavenging. Can’t have that, for health reasons. Know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do,” said Maurice vaguely. “I won’t be long.”
He stumbled as he walked away towards the tip.
Behind him, the skinhead said, “Pissed!”
“As a rat,” the old man agreed.
Maurice didn’t want to go back past the trees. He didn’t feel ready for that. Perhaps he could find another way out onto the road? He looked around. The whole area was enclosed by wire fences, as far as he could see, and he was in no mood to climb over them. He was barely able to walk, to keep upright, as it was.
He wandered into a mangled landscape of many levels. The earth rose and fell away in strange, half-related planes, like a cubist composition. Rough roads of cinders swooped up to sudden edges that led nowhere, or down and around to pools of oily, glinting rainwater and randomly dumped heaps of soil or refuse. It seemed that whole buildings had been dropped from the sky. Piles of bricks, toys, carpets, plaster, furniture, in violent juxtaposition, were dotted everywhere, and mounds the size of small hills, the remnants of unimaginable ruins, formed miniature alpine chains down into the old, unused quarries. All was covered by a dust-crested crust of varying thickness that split under him as he walked. His footsteps behind him oozed fleshy mud.
Paper and plastic scraps drifted endlessly across the site in the wind. Occasionally, larger segments of lightweight litter broke loose from the clotted mass and carved into the air, scaring up flocks of shrieking gulls and starlings. Smoke, or steam, puffed up mysteriously from various points, as though a huge engine was building up pressure deep under the earth. A machine made a pumping, clunking sound somewhere out of sight, and the strident alarm of a reversing earth-moving vehicle called out every few minutes from some hidden excavation.
He almost tumbled into a deep hole, about two feet wide. It reached diagonally down, like a giant rabbit’s burrow, into the compacted garbage. At first he thought that someone had been tunneling, for some unimaginable reason, but noticed that loose matter from underground had been pushed up around the lip of the hole, as though it had been dug out from under. He found other similar holes. He knelt beside one, and peered down into it. Buried wires, wooden laths, and plastic pipes had been torn apart by some powerful, or desperate digging. He couldn’t even guess at why the holes were there.
He wandered aimlessly amid the desolation, stumbling like a blind man searching for his lost stick, until he came to the edge of one of the so far unused quarries. Down inside it there was a small lake of pure, shining water reflecting the scudding clouds and the vivid blue of the sky. The sides of the quarry were steep, bare cliffs, or slopes of tumbled stone covered with blossoming shrubs and rich grass. To Maurice, it glowed and beckoned like the Promised Land. He looked for a way down into this pleasant place, but saw that he would have to walk a long way round to gain access. Too tired and depressed to make the effort, he sat down on a chunk of creamy marble, part of an old fireplace, to review his situation.
He still felt wretched. His body ached. Obviously, he needed to get to a doctor. He hoped that, when he got back to his car, he would be able to drive. It was only three miles into Buxton, but somehow, that sounded like a long way. He dreaded the thought of the journey.
He sat for a while, still as a stone, trying to read his own mind, to make sense of his recent experiences.
He seemed to be gazing out from some painful place deep within his skull.
The landscape in front of him, beyond the quarry, had a hectic look. Cars passing on the A6 chased each other viciously, the sound of their passage an angry, waspish buzz. Sheep, grazing in the long sweep of fie
lds that climbed up the side of Combs Moss to the rough crest of crags called Black Edge and Hob Tor, looked like fat, lazy maggots browsing on a green corpse. The hurtling clouds cast swooping shadows, like dark searchlights, across the pastures. He felt that he had slipped into another reality, similar to, but alarmingly unlike, the one he had previously inhabited.
Disgusted with the increasingly morbid turns his mind was taking, he got to his feet and looked back the way he had come. In spite of the indications of activity suggested by the various, continuous mechanical noises, he had seen nobody since he had left the two men in the porta-cabin. Now his eye caught the movement of five long-shadowed shapes moving slowly toward him across an area strewn with household waste. The figures stooped from time to time to lift objects from the ground, and stood still, heads down, as though inspecting their finds. Then, they would either drop whatever they had discovered, or walk over to one of their number who was awkwardly hauling a little cart of some kind, and carefully place their discoveries inside it. Their movements were even-paced, and languid to the point of listlessness.
With the low sun behind them, it was impossible to make out details of their features. He thought that two of them, including the smallest, who was tugging the cart in some sort of harness, were female. He got the impression they were dressed rather quaintly. As they got nearer, he could hear their voices, quiet and even-toned, like people at prayer. Presumably, they were discussing the treasures they were finding. They gave no indication that they were aware Maurice was there until the tip of the hugely extended shadow of the most forward of them touched his feet. Then, that figure stopped, raised his right hand to his shoulder, and the others behind him ceased all movement, as though they had become unplugged from their energy source. The man at the front raised his hand even higher, with his index finger close to his brow, and tapped a battered cap lodged above his ear, in an antiquated gesture of respect.
Maurice, embarrassed and irritated by the subservient gesture, which he automatically assumed was one of mock humility, found himself lost for a suitable response. He said, “Hello there!” in the tone he would use to greet one of his colleagues, met by chance on the streets of Manchester.
“I wish you a good day,” said the man who had touched his cap, then, after the slightest pause, he added, “Sir.” His voice was strangely accented, but there was no note of mockery in his unassuming tone.
Maurice looked hard at him, trying to read his expression, but the man’s face was in shadow, and he was too far away. There was a similarity in the posture of the five people, and Maurice was sure that they were a family. They all had a similar shape and stance. The woman pulled the cart was older than the other female, and he guessed she was the wife of the man who had addressed him, who had the air of a paterfamilias. The other three appeared to be in their late teens.
Their stillness (they remained static as waxworks) and their dumb silence as he stared at them, quickly got on Maurice’s frazzled nerves.
They’re wondering what I’m doing here, he thought. I must appear very odd to them. It’s obvious why they’re here; they’re scavenging, but what the hell can they hope to find that’s worth taking away? Can people be so desperate, that they have to search in this foul place for the battered, useless things that others have thrown away?
And; yes, he thought, they do look that abject.
Tired of standing pointlessly in silence, Maurice decided to return to his car. He set off in a line wide of the right of the group who, to his surprise, began themselves to move. They went to their cart and began sorting through its contents.
“Sir,” called the man. “Would you be at all interested in anything we’ve got here? Come and see. We’ve a few choice articles.” He held some object up. “Look at this. This is for you, sir, don’t you think? This is something you should have.”
Maurice glanced across, and shook his head. He couldn’t make out what the man had in his hand, and, for some reason, he was glad of that. “I have to go,” he called, and quickened his stride.
“Give us a chance, sir,” the man pleaded, in his odd accent. “Just look what we’ve got here. You’ll curse yourself, if you don’t.”
“That he will,” called a female voice, in a kind of soft wailing drawl. “You’ll curse yourself later, sir.”
Maurice hurried on, almost at a run. They continued to call after him, but he couldn’t hear what they said. He looked back a couple of times. They seemed to be following him, but he was well ahead of them, and the distance was welcoming.
The porta-cabin was shut when he reached it. He looked at his watch. It was almost seven, hours later than he thought! Where had the time gone?
He didn’t look at the line of trees as he passed, but something in them called out its chattering, scolding cry.
He drove home along the empty back lanes slowly and furtively, glancing in his rear view mirror every few moments.
Maurice’s wife was a hypochondriac. In the three years of their marriage she had built up an impressive collection of pills and potions for all her ills, real and imagined. They filled two drawers of a medium-sized chest in the bathroom. She kept alphabetical lists of them, stating what each one was good for.
Next morning, after a troubled night, Maurice browsed through the lists, selected four bottles, and gulped down a possibly dangerous mix of medication. He checked his post (more confirmation from the bank of what he already knew; he was on the brink of bankruptcy) then went to see if he had been Faxed any better news. He found more of the same.
He sat for a while in the cold gray computer-dominated room he used as an office, listening to a CD of natural and electronic sounds his wife had bought him to help him relax after he had told her they were going broke. She had left him three weeks later.
The pills started to work, and he fell into a deep sleep. The door bell rang twice before he was even half awake.
He got to his feet too quickly. The room wobbled under him. His eyes wouldn’t focus, and his mouth tasted and felt like the inside of a carpet sweeper. The bell rang again. Whoever it was, was in a bloody hurry! He glanced at himself in a mirror as he passed along the hall, and hated what he saw.
The front door was a fancy affair with beaded glass panels, and lots of expensive brass fittings. He had seen one like it on a backdrop representing the Ugly Sisters’ house in a pantomime version of “Cinderella” at the Buxton Opera House. It represented the taste of the house’s previous occupant. What he liked about it was that you could get a good idea who was on your front step through the glass without being seen and, if expedient, could take evasive action. He was finding he had to do that more often recently.
This time however, his caller was standing well back, and was just a thin blur.
As soon as he opened the door a man stepped off the drive and held a card up in Maurice’s face. The card was a dirty, eggy yellow and bore a tiny photograph of someone who may have been the person holding it. It was creased in a hundred places, as though its owner had used it to practise Origami. Maurice didn’t even try to read what was printed on it.
“I’ve been unemployed,” the man on the step said, “and I’m trying to do myself a bit of good. Trying to help myself.” He had a pallid, pinched boy’s face, with small features and a gap between his eyes so wide it seemed to be an effort for him to see straight. His head kept drifting evasively round from side to side. He looked in need of a lot of square meals. He could have been any age between fifteen and fifty. He poked the card down into his shirt pocket and started to open a cheap, bulging plastic sports bag.
“No thanks,” said Maurice, “I never buy anything at the door.” He began to push the door shut.
“You never do?” echoed the man in a bewildered tone. “But I’m trying to keep myself, I’m not just sitting back. It’s to make a living.”
Maurice was about to say something like, “That’s highly commendable, but no thank you,” when he realized that the man had an unusual accent; one that
he had heard before; yesterday, in fact! The pills had blurred his mind, or he would have noticed it at once. He looked keenly at the man and, yes! he could have been one of the people he had seen scavenging at the tip. He couldn’t be sure, but he had the stance, the pleading, praying voice. He had opened the zip along the top of the bag and was pulling things out—a child’s shoe, a partly melted and twisted comb, a two foot length of hose-pipe, a battered, lidless coffee jug, a tangle of used bandage ...
“Is any of this any use to you?” the man asked, like a child or a simpleton, totally unaware of the inappropriateness of his words and actions. He spread the bandage out along his arm, as though it were particularly worthy of attention.
Maurice looked at the dirty, bloodstained strip of muslin, and hoped that he was asleep and dreaming. He placed his hand over the sports bag to stop the emergence of more items. “You couldn’t have followed me here,” he said. “No one did; I watched the road. How did you find me?”
“Were you lost?” the man asked, puzzled. He didn’t seem to be joking.
The pointless, silly question enraged Maurice. He growled something like, “Get out!” and was about to slam the door shut with his foot when the man slid his thin fingers round inside the door frame.
Maurice strode onto the step. He grabbed the intruder’s wrist, and hauled him to the front gate. The man’s loose skin slid back alarmingly along his almost fleshless bones. He put up no resistance. He was surprisingly lightweight. He made sad, bleating sounds. He was searching automatically in his bag with his free hand. As Maurice forced the man out onto the pavement, he was aware that something was pushed into his jacket pocket. He gave the man a final shove on the back, to get him on his way, and marched back into his house.
He waited a few moments, then glanced out of a window to check that his visitor had gone.
The creature was on his knees, carving something on the wooden gate post with a pen-knife.
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